dirtyred wrote:my dad said that a farmer near them in the fifties had a B that use the exhuast to raise the cultivators instead of hydraulics. Any of ya'll seen one?

Ya, farmall had an exhaust powered lift system during WWII, supposedly hydraulic fluid was seriously expensive and rationed, the system used a rather large cylinder that was porcelin coated steel (to prevent rusting out) I don't believe the systems were very durable, certainly don't see many tractors equipped with one today. I belive they were refered to as "lift-all" but I am not sure on that. If I recall correctly from my farmall book there is a valve on them that is not available, and fails from moisture.

They worked reasonably well if given a decent amount of maintenance. They were relatively inexpensive for a power lift. The pressure valve screws directly into the exhaust manifold and no pressure valve parts are available from CaseIH any more.

IH evidently didn't think hydraulics would sell on a tractor as small as an A or B when those tractors were designed. After they realized a power lift was in demand, the Pneumatic Lift-All was something they could produce quickly that would fit within the existing tractor design. Given the constraints, it wasn't a bad system. It was not designed as a WWII stopgap. However, WWII delayed replacing it with hydraulics. That sequence of events may have been a blessing, in that IH came up with Touch-Control to replace it. Had they produced a hydraulic system in '39 or '40, it probably would have been similar to the relatively crappy H/M Lift-All and we would have been stuck with it well into the '50s.

I understand that both the H/M Lift-All and the Pneumatic Lift-All were designed by CW Mott when he worked at IH. One of the high up IH engineers (I've forgotten who, but no doubt an upper level boss above CW) once said that the flail mower was the only good idea CW Mott ever had.

Due to the large number of plants converted to produce machinery for war support, and the allotments of steel, rubber, etc. There was such a long waiting list for new tractors that they could sell any model or any color, they did not need to make a special one.

Jim Becker wrote:....... Had they produced a hydraulic system in '39 or '40, it probably would have been similar to the relatively crappy H/M Lift-All and we would have been stuck with it well into the '50s.......

Not too often I disagree with Jim, but considering where the H and M fell into the evolution of tractors and machinery I think it was a pretty good set up. Those tractors fell into a slot when money was tight, and many of the implements were reused from older tractors, F12, F20, The Lift-all allowed them to use those implements, and easily convert many of the hand lift items to hydraulic lift, without having to buy all new implements to go with the new tractor. Universal hitch with a built in lift, such as a 3 point were not in use then. Ferguson invented the 3 point and other could not use it without paying large royalties for several years till some lawsuits were filed and won by their competitors.

Maybe I should back off from my comment or rephrase or something. John is correct in his comments about the H/M Lift-All. It did everything it was intended to and was decent by 1939 standards. But by the end of the war, the standards had moved up considerably and the Touch-Control was a vast improvement.

Jim Becker wrote:Maybe I should back off from my comment or rephrase or something. John is correct in his comments about the H/M Lift-All. It did everything it was intended to and was decent by 1939 standards. But by the end of the war, the standards had moved up considerably and the Touch-Control was a vast improvement.

I'll add my 2 cents from what I heard from an old timer who used these tractors when he worked on his Dad's place. The lift-all didn't work very good at all and they stopped production on these tractors until they designed a hydraulic system to replace it. The lift-all was basically an assist to the manual lift mechanism. Gerry